Langdon Smith
Langdon Smith (January 4, 1858 - April 8, 1908) was an American journalist and celebrated "one-poem poet".Gardner, Martin (1962), "When You Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish", The Antioch Review, Fall 1962; Reprinted with an update in Gardner's 2009 book, When You Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish and other Speculations about This and That, New York, New York: Hill and Wang, pp 164-177. Life According to Lewis Allen Brown's 1909 biographical sketch of Smith: :Langdon Smith was born in Kentucky Jan. 4, 1858 ... In boyhood he served in the Comanche and Apache wars as a trooper, his letters descriptive of these campaigns winning him his first newspaper position. Later he acted as a war correspondent during the extended fighting with the Sioux tribes.Lewis Allen Brown ed. and intro., Evolution. A Fantasy. 'When you were a tadpole and I was a fish. Boston: John W. Lucey, 1904, iii. Gardner, who consulted Who's Who In America 1906-7 adds that Smith went to school in Louisville, Kentucky, 1864-1872. On February 12, 1894 Smith married Marie Antionette Wright, described as "a Louisville girl." Soon after he went to Cuba, reporting for the New York Herald on the guerilla operations of Antonio Maceo Grajales. Reporting In October 1897 Smith, along with fellow sports reporter Danny Smith, was sent by the New York Herald to Carson City, Nevada, where he covered the boxing match between James J. Corbett and English boxer Bob Fitzsimmons."Corbett Satisfied. Likes Nevada Better Than He Thought He Should." The Salt Lake Herald February 18, 1893, p. 1 col. 3. He returned to Cuba at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War (1898), reporting for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. According to Brown, "One of the first at the front, he was present at all the principal engagements, taking high rank as a war correspondent." Smith continued reporting for Hearst's Journal after the war. He was involved in a "scoop" for which Hearst papers became notorious, delivering the 1st newspaper of the 20th century to President McKinley. According to historian W. Joseph Campbell, :"Ten seconds into the century, the first issue of the New York Journal of 1 January 1901 fell from the newspaper's complex of fourteen high-speed presses. The first issue was rushed by automobile across pavements slippery with mud and rain to a waiting express train, reserved especially for the occasion. The newspaper was folded into an engraved silver case and carried aboard by Langdon Smith, a young reporter known for his vivid prose style. At speeds that reached eighty miles an hour, the special train raced through the darkness to Washington, D.C., and Smith's rendezvous with the president, William McKinley.""Introduction. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies" In the early years of the century he wrote for the New York Evening World as a featured writer, identified by his byline. Judging from the articles he published, he seems to have begun as a featured sports writer, with such articles as "Cock Fight Draws Out Millionaires" New York Evening World January 19, 1903 page 12. Beginning about 1904 his byline begins to appear frequently in the Sunday World and Sunday World Magazine on investigative articles such as "New York's Smiling Army of Factory Girls",New York Sunday World November 6, 1904 "A Night With a Tenderloin 'Cop'",New York Sunday World October 23, 1904 "A Day in the Hotel Astor Kitchen".New York World Sunday Magazine October 30, 1904 According to Brown, Smith wrote short stories, and a novel, On the Pan Handle, that were well received at the time. But Gardner was unable to verify any of this and doubts the novel and poems existed, except perhaps for a single poem, "Bessie McCall of Suicide Hall", mentioned in an article on Smith in The New York American of April 21, 1939 by one Hype Igoe. "Suicide Hall" was a saloon at 295 Bowery run by John McGurk from 1895 to 1902, when suicides by young prostitutes there forced him out of business."Lost Lights of the Tenderloin. 5. John H. M'Gurk." New York Evening World May 4, 1903, Home Magazine section, page 1. The building that had housed "Suicide Hall" was not demolished until 2005."Forgotten Street Scenes. Back to the Bowery. The end of McGurk's Suicide Hall." Death and wife's suicide Smith died at his home, 148 Midwood Street, Flatbush, New York on April 8, 1908."Evolution : A Fantasy" (1909) Google Book Search His grief-stricken wife committed suicide on June 10 of the same year, after having tried to do so on April 25."Husband Dead, Wife Kills Self. Grief Drives Mrs. Langdon Smith to Suicide -- Second Attempt Successful." New York Tribune Thursday June 11, 1908, p. 4. Lewis Allen Browne in his preface to Evolution : A Fantasy (1909) wrote: :Their lives and affections linked as they were, in his poetic fancy at least, since the beginning of time seemed to have created between them in reality a bond too close to survive a parting. Writing Evolution Aside from his journalism Smith's only known work is the romantic poem "Evolution", sometimes sub-titled or mistakenly called "A Tadpole and a Fish".The Cosmos Club (1999)The Philosophic Origins of Science. Based on a lecture by scientist Ntinos C. Myrianthopoulos. Retrieved August 30, 2006. The opening stanzas of this famous poem were written and published in the New York Herald in 1895. It was worked upon for many years and later published in full in the New York Journal sometime before 1906, and posthumously published in illustrated and annotated book form as Evolution : A fantasy (1909). The poem became very popular even before his death. It has been reprinted many times since. In his biographical sketch of Smith, Lewis Allen Brown describes it as follows: :"… it is as the author of "Evolution" that he is best remembered. Skilled as a war correspondent, himself a veteran Indian fighter, a technical writer of sports, possessed of a mentality too great to be handicapped through lack of university training, he thought for himself upon life and death, of the past and future, and in "Evolution" voiced his beliefs." Brown described how Evolution was composed: :"The first few stanzas of "Evolution" were written in 1895 and published in the New York Herald where he was then employed. Four years later, when a member of the New York Journal staff, he wrote several more. These he laid aside for a while and then, from time to time, added a stanza until it was completed. Whether the editorial department failed to appreciate the poem, or the foreman of the composing room needed something with which to fill out a page is not known, but "Evolution" first appeared in its entirety in the center of a page of want advertisements in the New York Journal." :"A work of such merit, however, could not be lost. Mr. Smith received thousands of congratulatory letters from all parts of the world, accompanied by requests for copies of the poem which were exceedingly difficult to secure until reprinted in April, 1906, in The Scrap Book, edited by Mr. Frank A. Munsey." Gardner claims to have located the precise issue of The New York Herald in which Evolution was originally published: that of September 22, 1895. He also notes that Brown's information was taken from the Who's Who In America 1906-1907 article and an obituary published in The New York American on April 9, 1908, page 6, and that Brown does not add any new information to these sources. According to a statement in The New York Times Book Review of July 23, 1910 it was "printed in full and illustrated in The Scrap Book of June 1909.""Queries and Answers From Readers". New York Times Book Review July 23, 1910, p. BR10. Tributes to Smith on his death invariably emphasize the poem. According to a notice in the Ocala (Florida) Evening Star of April 17, 1908: :"Langdon Smith, the war correspondent and writer, died on Wednesday, at his home in Brooklyn, New York. No New York newspaper man was better known than Smith, who could describe, equally well, a battle or a baseball game, says the New York Post. But the thing that he wrote which will live the longest – because it is worth while – is his poem "Evolution," which has been reprinted all over the country."Langdon Smith and "Evolution". Ocala Evening Star, Friday, April 17, 1908, page 2. Publications *''Evolution: A fantasy. Boston: J.W. Luce, 1909.Evolution: A fantasy (1909), Internet Archive. Web, Apr. 21, 2013. **also published in ''Poems of Evolution: An anthology, by Langdon Smith and others (edited by E. Haldeman-Julius). Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1924.Poems of Evolution, Open Library. Web, Dec. 26, 2018. Poems by Langdon Smith #Evolution See also *One-poem wonders *List of U.S. poets References Notes External links ;Poems *Evolution" *Evolution at PoemHunter ;Books *Langdon Smith at Amazon.com Category:American poets Category:American novelists Category:American journalists Category:1858 births Category:1908 deaths Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:One-poem wonders Category:Poets Category:People from Kentucky Category:Humorous poets